This primer provides an overview of the delivery and financing of institutional and community-based long-term services and supports in the United States, highlighting Medicaid’s key role, quality measurement and evaluation, and recent national reform efforts.

This brief summarizes the key issues identified and discussed by participants in Kaiser Family Foundation’s Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured’s July 16, 2013 roundtable meeting on state adoption of the new and expanded Affordable Care Act home and community-based services (HCBS) options. While states have made overall progress in rebalancing their long-term care systems in favor of community-based care, state adoption of ACA HCBS options has been relatively slow to date, despite the growing demand for HCBS among beneficiaries and the enhanced federal funding associated with several of these options.

This brief examines the role of Medicare and Medicaid in the lives of dually eligible beneficiaries – low-income seniors and younger adults with disabilities who are eligible for both programs – through personal profiles. It includes a glossary of eligibility and service delivery system terms and state-level enrollment and expenditure data for dual eligibles.

This tutorial was produced for kaiserEDU.org, a Kaiser Family Foundation website that ceased production in September 2013. The kaiserEDU.org tutorials are no longer being updated but have been made available on kff.org due to demand by professors who are using the tutorials in class assignments. You may search for other…

This report features nine seniors and people with disabilities living in Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Louisiana, North Carolina, and Tennessee, who rely on home and community-based services (HCBS). These profiles illustrate how beneficiaries’ finances, employment status, relationships, well-being, independence, and ability to interact with the communities in which they live—in addition to their health care—are affected by their Medicaid coverage and the essential role of HCBS in their daily lives.

This analysis provides a detailed look at per person Medicare spending on the nearly 30 million beneficiaries over age 65 who are enrolled in the traditional Medicare program. Among the key findings of the report is that per person spending rises with age, peaking at age 96. But this rise is not entirely explained by Medicare spending on end of life care, which declines with age. What Medicare spends money on also changes as beneficiaries age. Hospital care is the largest component of Medicare spending throughout the age curve, up to age 100, but there is less spending on physician services and more on home health, skilled nursing and hospice care as beneficiaries age.

A new Kaiser Family Foundation analysis and chartbook break down what beneficiaries with traditional Medicare pay for their health care, including insurance premiums, and costs for medical and long-term care services. The analysis highlights the significant variations in what people pay based on the services they use, and their age,…

This report summarizes the key participation and spending trends in 2011 for the three main Medicaid Home and Community-Based Services (HCBS) programs – (1) the mandatory home health services state plan benefit, (2) the optional personal care services state plan benefit, and (3) optional § 1915(c) HCBS waiver services. Also highlighted are 2013 state eligibility, enrollment, and provider reimbursement policies.

A new report, The Rising Cost of Living Longer: Analysis of Medicare Spending by Age for Beneficiaries in Traditional Medicare, from the Kaiser Family Foundation takes a detailed look at per person Medicare spending by age and by service among the nearly 30 million people covered by traditional Medicare in 2011